General Small archetype packages

Blood Sun doesn't combo with Lotus Field, it just doesn't affect it.

You’re like Einstein. Sometimes you miss the simplest things; other times you are absolutely brilliant! It was run quite a lot in Standard 1 year ago. As Ondezeeboot said if you have Sun out, then Field doesn’t enter tapped, doesn’t have hexproof and doesn’t makes you sacrifice two lands.

 
Sometimes you miss the simplest things; other times you are absolutely brilliant!

Story of my life, no joke. People keep telling me this at gaming, football (the one Americans call soccer), work and especially back at school. Not always great, but I'm okay with this.

I'm sorry I was so wrong, didn't mean to sound harsh or anything. Just didn't read the goddamn card.
 
Magic cards can do that to you.

“Read me, read me, read me.”

“Nah bro, I know how this card works even if I only look at the first sentence.”

Sometime later...

“Oh so that text WASN’T flavor text after all!”
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Magic cards can do that to you.

“Read me, read me, read me.”

“Nah bro, I know how this card works even if I only look at the first sentence.”

Sometime later...

“Oh so that text WASN’T flavor text after all!”

I once got beaten down by a Nagao, Bound by Honor during a prerelease, while holding Barrel Down Sokenzan in hand with two Mountains in play. Only after the match did I realize Barrel Down dealt twice the number of mountains returned... :oops:
 
How do you run a mill deck that can be interacted with? Nephalia Drownyard was such GRBS in my cube (probably due to cube speed).

Mill is generally uninteractive, which is why it's so frustrating to play against. I like creatures that mill as they are the most easy to interactive with. I like



As its almost a mini package in itself and great with clones and untap.

Lower impact



Pretty specific and more intermittent in its mill effects.



This is borderline for me. Four cards is a lot, and gets dangerous when you blink, bounce and copy it. It does give a window for interactions.



This is expensive to activate but can be a lot of cards in late game which can be a bit unsatisfying.

I miss playing



But it didn't really want to go in other decks and was painfully difficult to remove sometimes, not sure 8 toughness is all that interactive!

For me I like the entrance as a stand alone, but it would be nice if we had one or two more playable options at the appropriate power level.
 


is a start to a great compact mill/self-mill package

then there’s:


if you run heavy enough graveyard interaction that it is good enough to run just to target your own library.

and I like this as well


These cards can allow the same deck to both attack your opponents library and fuel your own resources. Add in Laboratory Maniac and you have some nice push pull imo. Baronesque with Delve and whatnot.
 
I'm currently working a cycling/looting theme into my cube. I already have these payoffs:



I'm thinking about these:



All they need are draw/discard effects. Great cycling spells are available in all colors. For discard, I also like repeatable outlets like ...



Super easy to get a big enough number of these cards into your cube, as they work with all kind of graveyard themes, madness or control decks and many more. Just throw in one or more payoffs and you got yourself an new archetype!
 
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I'm currently working a cycling/looting theme into my cube. I already have these payoffs:



I'm thinking about these:



All they need are draw/discard effects. Great cycling spells are available in all colors. For discard, I also like repeatable outlets like ...



Super easy to get a big enough number of these cards into your cube, as they work with all kind of graveyard themes, madness or control decks and many more. Just throw in one or more payoffs and you got yourself an new archetype!

I used to play Faith of the Devoted but I cut it for space a few months ago. The floor of 3 mana do nothing is just a little too low for me, and unlike Drake Haven, you can't get more than 2 damage out of 1 mana. However, since you have a life-gain matters theme in your W/B section I could see it being serviceable, possibly even alongside some of the more recent Drannith Healer.

Glint-Horn Buccaneer is a decent body who can get in and attack right away. I think the Buccaneer is playable in most red decks, even ones that don't care too much about anything other than the Hasty Body. He's an easy include if you're trying to support a discard deck.
 
The two other discard matter cards that I can think of (excluding Archfiend of Ifnir for power level reasons)



The Miser is stronger than the badger, but given enough overlap in your red section, I can see the badger making it in. I do think Buccaneer is better than him though as it's cheaper and is an enabler and payoff by himself.
 

Dom Harvey

Contributor
The new girl on the block is a great discard payoff:



The discard payoffs are at their best if you have ways to dump a bunch of cards at once (Attunement in particular is great, since you can put the down payment on it whenever and then any discard-matters card is an immediate threat):



One of green's most iconic cards finds the payoffs and then kicks them into overdrive:

 
Great suggestions guys!

What do we think of this one:



it's not strictly worse than drake haven but still quite a bit. Is it better or worse than F?
 
I feel like this could be better just based on the effect, getting flying 1/1s works both defensively and offensively in a way that draining 2 life doesn't.
 
Cairn is pretty bad imo



is a good white bleed over card since cycling involves discard and you’re likely running a good bit to support the other discard matters cards. It’s lame that everything cost 3 cmc. There’s always escape protocol I suppose
 
I don't think cycling matters still counts as small package. You need a high enough density fir these to naturally end up in decks, abd excluding all looting/rummaging spells and wild mongrels doesn't help exactly.
 
Naya Feather was a potent deck before Ixalan and Reckless Rage rotated out. (This is from the historic card pool) The OG heroes from Theros have potentially even more powerful effects.



Enablers
Sentinel's Eye (maybelist). Some green and red removals like Warbriar Blessing and Iroas's Blessing or Rabid Bite. I see the new verisons also use Fight as one. It can trigger both Feather/Rhino AND Tenth district legionnaire. Shoutout to Solely Singleton for pointing out the power and flexibility of this card (given some variation between humans and non-humans in your list).
 
The cycling matters deck requires a high density of cyclers, definitely not a small archetype :D

Despite that being true, is this card maybe just a cubeable solo payoff?



It is a 3/2 for 2, which is always playable in aggro - and it's in the best aggro colors. And really how many cyclers do you need before this lion becomes good in more modrange-y decks? Maybe four? One activation already makes it a really powerful play. As the cycling card replaces itself, that makes the Thundermane already a 187-creature, comparable in powerlevel to something like Fire Imp with a better base body. Everything beyond that is nuts.
 
I think it was someone else here go estimated that you needed 60 cyclers in a 360 cube to get the same as-fan as Ikoria? I didn't do this math myself, so I don't know, and probably you can get away with a slightly lower density of cyclers if you have fewer payoffs. The enablers are going to need to take up a good chunk of your cube either way you do it, but it's cycling so that should hopefully already be a mechanic that you run a couple of cards with.

Quite fond of having a very large number of enablers for something there is only maybe 1-2 payoffs. The enablers are transparent in this case in that you'd always want the cyclers anyway, but a card like thundermane can come along mid-pack 2 and just spice things up alot while also not taking up that much space in the cube!
 
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